Canon SL1 vs Canon T6 – Which is the better entry-level DSLR option?

“See Impossible” is one of Canon’s famous tagline. But they made sure to their consumers that it’s not just a tagline, it’s more of a promise that they will never stop producing high-end cameras.

For decades, everyone can attest that they are still keeping their promise as they continuously produce cameras that are not only equipped with high-end technology but also designed for portability and versatility.

Two of its finest cameras are under EOS Rebel Series, and those are SL1 and T6. The table below will show you a brief comparison of Canon SL1 and T6.

Canon SL1 vs Canon T6

PRODUCT

Weight
(Body)

Battery

Lens Mount

Image Sensor

Image Stabilization

Weather Sealing

Canon EOS Rebel SL1

370g

LP-E12
(7.2V output and 875mAh capacity)

Canon EF mount

CMOS Sensor

No

No

Canon EOS Rebel T6

440g

LP-E10
(7.2V and 1600mAh capacity)

Canon EF mount

CMOS Sensor

No

No

Review of Best Products

July 26, 2013 – Canon launched their smallest and lightest DSLR camera, and that’s EOS Rebel SL1. Its size may be small but certainly not its performance as it is equipped with 18-Megapixel CMOS APS-C sensor and DIGIC 5 image processor.

Aside from its compact body design, Canon SL1 is also known for its autofocus performance and touchscreen capability.

Canon SL1 has a 9-point AF system and a hybrid CMOS AF II system. These two are designed to ensure the focus consistency and accuracy whenever shooting for still images and recording videos using live view.

While for its touchscreen capability, Canon designed it just like in smartphones. You can easily review shot by pinching the screen whenever you want to zoom it in or out.

Its other key features are:

Lens Correction Tool

Canon SL1 and T6 may have a similar lens mount type, but the one advantage Canon SL1 have over T6 is it has a lens correction tools.

One of the tools is the Peripheral Illumination Correction that works by correcting the light reduction in the corner of the image where the characteristics of the lens are being used.

While the other one is Canon’s well-known chromatic aberration correction. This tool works by removing the halos and color fringing around the high-contrast edges.

Feature Guide

Canon equipped SL1 with Feature Guide to ensure that the users will not have a hard time familiarizing the controls and its other functionalities.

The Feature Guide works by giving a helpful description for every situation at hand. For example, if you’re about to shoot your subject but you have no idea what’s the best shooting mode to use. The Feature guide will automatically display a simple description suggesting the best possible shooting mode to use.

It’s a total time saver! The Feature Guide is set in automatic by default but you can always disable it anytime you want. You can find it on the camera’s menu.

Advanced Creative Filters

Filters are in-demand for the past few years. Even Canon SL1 released in 2013, it still consists 7 of the best filters. These filters are Water Painting Effect, Art Bold Effect, Fisheye Effect, Soft Focus, Grainy B/W, Miniature Effect and Toy Camera Effect.

Aside from filters, it also has 3 new accessible Special Scene Modes: Kids, Food and Candlelight.

March 10, 2016 – Canon launched EOS Rebel T6 with a goal of producing impressive image quality and fast sharing connectivity. This time Canon ensures that this camera, aside from producing impressive image quality, it can share every image taken fast with its all-new built-in Wi-Fi and NFC technology.

Another advantage of Canon T6 to SL1 is it has a longer battery life of 550 shots per charge (SL1 has 380 shot per charge).

Its other key features are:

Full HD Movie Mode

Recording videos in high-definition become possible with Canon T6 as it offers a full HD movie mode. This mode has the capability to shoot in different sizes and frame rates ranging from 640×480, 11Mbps to 1920×1080, 46Mbps.

The full HD movie mode works by pressing the designated Live View/Movie Recording button. From there you can easily enable the manual control of exposure, Live View features, and focus whenever you need to.

Imaging features

Canon T6 offers 2 imaging features: Basic+ and Creative Auto.

The Basic+ is more about creating a beautiful image effect such as adjusting the scene type or mood. You can do this by selecting your choices on the camera’s Quick Control Screen.

While for Creative Auto mode, Canon T6 puts the basic settings in fully automatic operation. But don’t worry the camera still displays guides explaining how to make the changes to the settings (e.g. exposure, sharpness) and its effect on the image on the screen.

Auto White Balance

There are times when you take a picture the result will either come out too yellow-ish or red-dish color. This effect is caused by different light sources.

With Canon T6 you’ll never have that problem because it has Auto White Balance feature. The feature offers two settings: ambience priority which preserves the warm color tones of your image to maintain the settings, and white priority which ensures that the white lighting is neutral in color.

Once you shoot, Canon T6 will automatically adjust the white balance according to the settings you prefer.

Conclusion

After pointing out each cameras advantages and disadvantages, there’s only one question to answer, “Which is the better option?”

In our opinion, the better option is Canon SL1. We chose this because it’s portable and has more to offer than Canon T6, considering it has been released 3 years before it. These features are, but not limited to:

It has a higher resolution of 1.040k dots (Canon T6 has 920k dots).

It has a larger viewfinder which is more comfortable to use and brighter too.

It has a touchscreen capability which gives users easy control on all of its functions.

Lastly, it has a microphone port which is a real convenience for shooting videos.